This simple still life of autumn gourds, pumpkins, and corn was a practice painting. These foods represent the simple staples that most of the world lives on, when their budget does not allow them to eat a fat rich diet of processed foods like most Americans seem to enjoy.
A Thoughtful Drought
By Al Vester
If a horse that is led to water
Can’t be made to drink,
Then, what proves a man
Who’s taught ideas
Can be made to think.
Cultural Kindness
Nearly every culture in the world has rules about being kind and respectful to close neighbors. However, a universal exception to the kindness rule seems to exist when dealing with people who violate cultural norms. A societal culture consists of its collection of values, esthetic and dietary tastes, and interpersonal expectations. Cultures can change over time, but sudden changes or challenges to prevailing expectations bring swift negative reactions. This is especially true if those changes impact on prevailing religious, occupational, or dietary habits. By religion I am referring to personal values of right and wrong of which everyone has a set to a greater or lesser degree. Occupational norms include the social and financial status of individuals within a culture. The foods we eat and how they are prepared are the dearest to many individuals because of their family upbringing and social heritage.
Religious value
During Christ’s lifetime, the prevailing religion in his area made a big deal about ritually washing hands before eating. When the disciples of Jesus Christ failed to follow this ritual, they were highly condemned. (Matthew 15:2)
Occupational norms
Eighteen centuries later, a Hungarian physician named Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, found that hand washing in chlorinated lime solutions could nearly eliminate cases of puerperal fever also called childbed fever. Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. When he continued to vigorously campaign to promote the practice of washing hands before examining patients, his fellow doctors were highly offended at being accused of causing diseases that they were trying to treat. They had Doctor Semmelweis committed to an insane asylum, where he died two weeks later from a beating by the guards. Offending the occupational norms of a culture can be hazardous to your health.
Dietary norms
In 1985, Doctor Cadwell B Esselstyn was a well-known and respected surgeon who had performed over five thousand surgeries including surgery for thyroid problems, breast cancer, colon cancer, and various types of heart diseases. When he found that most of his patients did not improve greatly, he experimented with diet changes. He put eighteen of his patients on a low-fat, plant-based diet. The results of his experiment demonstrated the first dramatic reversal of heart disease in history. But instead of recognizing him as a hero, the medical establishment rejected his approach as counter to their culture of treating patients with drugs or by surgery. Trying to cure diseases in an affluent society is very profitable, but promoting an effective disease prevention program is not profitable for either doctors or pharmaceutical companies. But the single biggest problem is that most Americans like their high-fat, meat and dairy based diets, even if it does cause them to gain weight and run the risk of heart-disease and cancer.
(Least I be accused of picking only on the medical profession for cultural prejudices, similar examples could be found in other industries, like why no-iron shirts had to wait a generation to be introduced to the public after they had been invented, or, why Dyson had to start his own vacuum company making bag-less vacuums because the other vacuum companies were making a lot of money selling disposable bags for vacuums.)
Summary
Most people find it easy to be kind to those whose values, profession, family background and eating preferences are like their own. They find it much harder to be kind with different cultural norms. However, we live in a global society where cultural clashes are now much more common. Dealing kindly with such differences will not only promote peace, it just may prove the most beneficial way to improve our cultures and our lives.
